Movies and music more popular than gaming on Xbox Live

More people are now using their Xbox 360 to watch movies and TV shows than they are to play video games, as Microsoft celebrates the launch of yet more new entertainment apps in the US.

Xbox 360 – it also plays games

The Xbox 360 is used more for watching movies and TV shows, and listening to music, than it is for playing video games. That’s according to a surprising new statement from Microsoft’s marketing and strategy team.Although Microsoft’s route into the video games market was through core games, the company’s wider goal has always been to become an ‘entertainment hub’ for the living room – and preventing Sony (or now more relevantly Apple) from doing the same.And it seems as if they’re achieving just that, with American households apparently spending an average of 84 hours a month on Xbox Live, compared to 150 for ordinary television. That’s an increase of 30 per cent on the previous year but more importantly just over half that time is spent watching videos and music, not playing games.Of the 66 million Xbox 360s sold worldwide more than 20 million people pay for an Xbox Live Gold subscription, which is needed to access most of the console’s entertainment services.’What we’re seeing is that people are turning on the Xbox to play games and then keeping it on afterwards to get other types of entertainment,’ said Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi to the Los Angeles Times .

In the US the Xbox 360 now has 36 different entertainment applications including Netflix, ESPN, Hulu, Vudu, YouTube, and new addition HBO Go. The availability of these apps varies greatly from country to country but in the UK Sky has had one for some time now and just this month the BBC iPlayer was added as well.

Many gamers have become worried at Microsoft’s apparent attempts to distance itself from core games, following both the push for the casual market of Kinect and the deemphasising of gaming on the most recent dashboard update.The news is the latest in an increasingly confused picture of the modern games industry, where the UK’s only dedicated retail chain has gone into administration but where video game sales last year beat both movies and music for the first time.It’s strange days for gaming and it’s going to be very interesting to see how Microsoft’s approach to the Xbox brand changes with the next generationâ¦